Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Guest Post Wed: Creating Unique Characters

Too many characters in novels are too much alike. As a result, the
stories and the characters' actions (and reactions) become predictable.
You'd already know what would happen only a few chapters in the story!
This is what you want to avoid when you're writing your own story –
having characters that are too much like the other characters. There are
way you can create characters that are different enough from each other
that your readers won't get bored. Here are a few tips on how to do
just that...

Tips for Creating Unique Characters

1. Give your characters character before you give them names.
Contrary to what many writers think, the name doesn't make the
character. The name is only incidental and is used to identify the
character, but it doesn't make the character. Save naming your
characters last. Focus first on defining your characters in terms of
personality, family, relationship, situation, education, job and any
other number of things that can form the individuals in question.

2. Watch people.
Take a day off and go sit in a cafe for an hour or two and just watch
people. This is a fun activity and extremely useful when it comes to
defining your characters and giving them specific mannerisms and
nuances. Many writers find people watching a major source of
inspiration. You can observe how people interact, you can get ideas for
personality traits, and you can formulate your own view of just how
different people are. Life would be boring if all people were the same;
the same applies to the characters in your book too!

3. Write down key story points.
This can help you make your characters different from each other. How
would each of your characters react in specific events? Reactions to
certain situations are often used to define people -- in the press and
on TV, for instance.

4. Read other authors' works.
Reading the works of other authors can give you ideas as to what kind of
information you can use to make your characters different from each
other. Check out novels by popular or bestselling authors. You're
certain to pick up a thing or two from reading their work.

5. Brainstorm your characters.
This allows you to build up individual character profiles. You can
compare the character profiles so you can look over each of your
characters and identify and eliminate any major similarities that could
actually lead to your characters become carbon copies of each other.
Make notes about your characters and keep those notes handy; you can
refer back to those notes in case you stray later and begin to get
characters confused.

More than anything, your character profiles are
useful tools you can use when you are writing your story.

You can refer
to these profiles whenever you need to to make sure your characters are
consistent with their personality and that they aren't starting to act
like the same people.